by Viviana Mazza
The daughter’s complaint on Instagram. The human rights lawyer dedicated the Civil Courage Award, which she accepted on Tuesday in New York, to the young woman who fell into a coma without a veil. The news of his death arrived that same evening
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
NEW YORK – Lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh received the “Civil Courage Prize” in New York last Tuesday. Wilson Center scientist Haleh Esfandiari (also imprisoned in Iran years ago) collected it on her behalf because Nasrin cannot leave Iran. But the Iranian activist had sent a video in which she dedicated the award to the “Women, Life and Freedom” movement that emerged after the assassination of Mahsa Amini and presented it in particular to Armita Geravand and her mother. On Sunday morning, at the funeral of Armita, the girl who mysteriously fell into a coma and then died without a veil in the Tehran subway, Nasrin Sotoudeh was also present. The news of the young woman’s death arrived that same evening. Sources close to the activist confirmed to the Courier that she was brutally beaten by Iranian security forces. Nasrin’s daughter Mehraveh Khandan, who is studying abroad, wrote on Instagram that her mother had been arrested. The family has not heard from the family since.
The lawyer
Sotoudeh, 60, is one of the very few human rights lawyers who remained in the country after the 2009 repression: she has defended minors on death row, student activists, Kurds, Baha’i activists and members of the so-called “One Million Signatures” campaign. Girls from Via Revolution” who refused to wear the veil, starting from the courageous protest of Vida Movahedi, who rolled her veil around a stick and waved it like a flag in the street. Director Jafar Panahi immortalized her in his documentary “Taxi”.
“The movement is not dead”
“This award is for the great movement of Woman, Life, Freedom, for the women who spontaneously rose from the oppressive yoke of patriarchy,” Nasrin said in the video shown in New York. And obviously defending one’s rights has resulted in the loss of many lives. The demonstrators had their eyes gouged out to prevent them from seeing. But their eyes multiplied into thousands of other eyes so that the world could witness this struggle of women and men for a simple, ordinary life.
“Make sure they know that the movement is not dead, that it continues”: this is the message Sotoudeh wanted her friend Haleh Esfandiari to convey to the Civil Courage Award audience. Sotoudeh is a leader of the women’s movement in Iran, as is Narges Mohammadi, winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. This did not go unnoticed by the regime, which is why both received very harsh sentences. At the same time, both represent an important link between the past and present struggles of women in Iran, but they are fighting not only against gender discrimination, but for a fairer society for all. Despite the regime telling them not to do that, after 2009 she gave interviews to foreign media about the political prisoners she represented, as she did with Corriere. His ongoing relationship with the world outside Iran is tied to the fact that Sotoudeh sees Iran’s struggle as part of a global movement.
The sentences
In 2011, she was sentenced to six years in prison, five for “threatening national security” and one for appearing in a video without a veil (she ultimately served three years). The accused video comes from two years ago: Short hair, glasses, sitting at a desk, his body hidden in a large black jacket, Nasrin thanked the Bolzano-based organization Human Rights International for awarding him the 2008 Human Rights Prize. Furthermore, in this case it was She was unable to pick him up in person because her passport had been confiscated as she prepared to leave Tehran airport. But he had sent this video, which a supporter then shared on YouTube. When we once asked Nasrin after an interview if we could photograph her, she nodded. When we noticed that she wasn’t wearing a veil, we asked her if it wasn’t dangerous, but she replied that wearing a veil in public was required by law, not in private. In June 2018, she was arrested again for representing the “Girls of the Via Revolution” who refused to wear the veil and sentenced to 38.5 years in prison and 148 lashes for espionage and spreading propaganda that insulted the colonel Leader: According to Iranian law, he must spend 12 years in prison, the longest sentence. But last February, he gave a courageous interview to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour during her release from prison: He also emphasized that the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement is not dead, and drew attention to the doctor and human rights activist Farhad Meysami, who is in terrible health conditions in prison after starting a hunger strike against the decision to lead other prisoners to the gallows and against the requirement to veil. “In the end, Nasrin’s courage served to free Farhadi,” Amanpour explains.
The family
With boldness, intelligence and calm, Nasrin Sotoudeh has achieved extraordinary things while remaining within the boundaries of Iranian law. In his bare study stands a statue of Justice with a sword in his right hand and a pair of scales in his left. There are many small pieces of paper hanging on the wall behind her desk: letters of solidarity that were sent from all over the world to her children Mehraveh and Nima when she was arrested in 2011. In a letter to her children from prison a few years earlier, she wrote that she missed them very much, but that they were her motivation. “They need freedom and justice. Every time I defend a minor, I think of you. Nasrin has always been convinced that the price she paid was not in vain. “To be an Iranian woman, you have to be optimistic,” she once said.
October 29, 2023 (modified October 29, 2023 | 5:22 p.m.)
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